By Conner Williams Opinion-Editorial Editor
As the year comes to a close and you are slowly losing the ability to process any academic information whatsoever, you might consider switching over from working your mind muscles to your muscle muscles (yeah, that’s the right term!) as the nice weather makes its way into the Pacific Northwest.
In other words, it’s about that time of year when you already have or are about to make yourself a promise that this summer is the one where you go all out and get the best body you’ve ever had.
We’ve all been there, myself included. The winter and spring seasons came to a close much too quickly, and you’ve checked the scale several hundred times trying to trick yourself into thinking that you didn’t actually put on those ten pounds. All you did was drink craft beer and eat homemade cookies all winter; what’s the big deal, right?
Hey, I’m not judging you. I’m in the same boat, and believe me, I’m ready to get down to business and hit the gym.
I have pledged allegiance to the gym of the United Plates of America, and to the lifestyle for which it stands, one weight room, under Arnold, with protein shakes and curls for all.
Ahem, excuse me, my inner gym bro took over for a second there.
So, here are a few simple general tips for shedding those unwanted pounds for your ideal summer body and overall physical health.
1. Stick to complex carbohydrates
Complex carbohydrates are digested slowly and provide long-term fuel for your muscles. They often contain higher amounts of fiber and derive from whole grains and legumes.
Contrary to complex carbs are simple carbs, which are made up of more “basic sugars with little real value for your body,” according to Diana Rodriguez of everydayhealth.com and reviewed by Lindsey Marcellin, MD, MPH. They are digested quickly, raising your glycemic index and increasing insulin production.
This is not ideal because when your insulin has spiked too much and your body has reached its maximum amount of glycogen storage in the muscles for immediate use, the excess is stored as fat. If only we could store an unlimited amount of glycogen as muscle, this would be a much simpler process. Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works.
Simple carbs take the form of white bread, pasta, white rice, and just about anything with a starch base. Unlike complex carbs, which contain longer chains of sugars to slow down digestion and deliver energy for longer periods of time, simple carbs contain short chain sugars and are low in fiber, providing energy for short periods of time and thus leading to increases in fat storage.
It’s fairly effortless to make simple substitutions in your diet; switch white rice with brown, eat whole grain bread rather than white (Dave’s Killer Bread is the best, in my opinion), try sweet potatoes rather than regular ones, and eliminate simple sugars like candy and soda.
2. Increase and vary your cardio
Believe me, I hate doing cardio just as much as the next person, but it plays a huge role in burning fat. Try to find something active that you enjoy doing or can at least tolerate, such as jogging, playing tennis, racquetball, swimming, bicycling, or some other activity where your heart rate is elevated for an extended period of time.
These longer periods of cardio are called aerobic exercise, which means that they require the intake of oxygen to move and fuel your muscles. The sibling of aerobic exercise is anaerobic exercise, which is “any short-duration exercise that is powered primarily by metabolic pathways that do not use oxygen,” according to the Medical Dictionary of thefreedictionary.com.
This type of exercise consists of brief, interval-based activities, such as sprinting and weightlifting, which invoke the use of fast-twitch muscle fibers, as opposed to aerobic exercise, which recruits slow-twitch fibers for muscular exertion. Fast-twitch fibers are large and are utilized for power and strength, while slow-twitch fibers are used for endurance exercises like running and cycling.
Think of the contrast in body composition between a sprinter and a marathon runner, and you’ll understand the difference between the two muscle types. Both forms of cardio should be utilized, but many argue that anaerobic exercise may lead to increased fat loss as opposed to aerobic exercise.
According to an article on bodybuilding.com by Shannon Clark, an exercise science and sport performance degree recipient from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, anaerobic activities “will boost metabolism a good deal more than moderate paced training.”
In addition, this means that the body will burn more calories while at rest, thus increasing overall calorie and fat burning even when not working out. Burning calories while I’m watching Netflix? Sign me up. I’ll take 15 minutes of sprints over an hour jog any day.
3. Make sure to eat breakfast
As college students who often sleep in until the very last minute before our first morning class, we sometimes make the conscious choice to skip breakfast in order to save precious wake-up time.
First of all, if you sleep an average of eight hours per night, that is eight hours that you’re going without fuel. And if you skip breakfast, you’re sacrificing more time where you could have revved up your metabolism with a balanced meal.
Unfortunately, fat is the first stored tissue that our body chooses to use for fuel when we are sleeping, and that is why it is important to fuel your body and kick start your metabolism fairly soon upon waking.
In addition, it is not uncommon for people that skip breakfast to ingest more calories during the day to make up for their hunger and lack of fuel at the beginning of the day. I personally like something simple: three scrambled eggs, one cup of steel-cut oatmeal, and a banana.
4. Limit your alcohol consumption
This is painful for me to put on this list, but make no mistake, alcohol is a huge supplier of empty calories. By that, I mean that it is full of carbs and calories and offers hardly any other nutritional value.
Granted, many studies have shown that moderate amounts of certain alcohol, particularly red wine, can reduce the risks of cardiovascular disease and heart attacks.
According to an article from WebMD on a study by Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute, the study reported that “light drinkers who consumed wine cut their risk of dying prematurely by almost one third, and wine drinkers as a group had significantly lower mortality rates from cardiovascular disease and cancer.”
That sounds great, but remember that this is all in moderation. Doing keg stands at a party is going to bring in a significant amount of calories, all of which have no additional nutritional value. They don’t call it a beer gut for nothing.
So while you’re kicking back and sipping a Corona (assuming you’re of age and it’s a light) on the beach showing off your brand-new abs, you’ll be able to look back on this list and realize that all it took was some simple diet tweaking, creative and varied cardio work, and moderation to achieve that summer bod you’ve always wanted.
